Posted on 05/09/2004 10:48:23 AM PDT by ahadams2
ANGLICAN COMMUNION MOVES TOWARDS PRECIPICE
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
A leak from the Lambeth Commission this week suggests that the Anglican Communion must face the inevitability of a formal split because it cannot agree on the rightness or wrongness of homosexual behavior by segments of the Communion, and the fulfillment of the latter in the consecration of an avowed homosexual to the American episcopacy.
The unidentified source told Ruth Gledhill of the TIMES that a proposal was on the table to turn the Anglican Communion into an Anglican confederation.
What apparently is now on the table is a confederation, modeled along similar lines to the Geneva-based World Lutheran Federation.
What this means is that relations between provinces would be freed up,with new loyalties based on differing theological and moral principles.
The one unifying principle for both conservative and liberal Anglicans is that they remain in communion with the mother Church of England through the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Furthermore, where a national church went too far in embracing modern secular mores, it could be reduced to an observer status or not invited at all to meetings such as the Lambeth Conference, held every ten years.
Such a system, the source said, would placate the conservatives who have been demanding disciplinary measures against churches such as those in the United States, which ordained an openly homoerotic bishop, and Canada, where same-sex blessings have been authorized.
It would permit provinces effectively to excommunicate each other by refusing to recognize their priests or bishops, but they would remain tied in a loose international Anglican confederation by remaining in communion with Canterbury. Canon lawyers are preparing documents they will present next month in Kanuga, NC to see if the Lutheran model is viable.
In a letter sent over the weekend to all the primates and moderators of the Anglican Communion, Dr Robin Eames, the Primate of Ireland, who chairs the Lambeth Commission, pled strongly with conservatives not to split by forming new provinces or dioceses until the commission has completed its work at the end of this year.
In a subsequent article by Jonathan Petre of the TELEGRAPH following another leak, or perhaps a continuation of the trial balloon being floated, an all-powerful "star chamber", headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury would be created under proposals to avert the collapse of worldwide Anglicanism over homosexuality.
The blueprint drawn up by advisers, would grant Dr Rowan Williams significant new powers, though not enough to transform him into an Anglican "pope". The archbishop would preside over a final court of appeal, allowing him to exercise the "judgment of Solomon" over warring factions in the 77-million strong Church.
Now the idea of a federation is not entirely new. A paper drawn up last year by Professor Norman Doe, a commission member and the director of the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University had already suggested that provinces should be prevented from acting unilaterally against the greater good of the communion as a whole.
Doe's commission paper argued that when disputes arose, a final appeal could be made to the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by a "bench" of senior churchmen and theologians. Any province acting in defiance of the archbishop's judgment could be expelled.
So what does all this mean?
Clearly, at one level, liberals and revisionists would be the obvious losers in any break up of the Communion.
Pansexualist Anglicans have become the most aggrieved group since they aired their feelings at Lambeth '98, and any attempt to discipline them will be met with great resistance. In provinces like the ECUSA and Canada they will demand that they are autonomous with provincial and national canons and constitutions that are not subject to international discipline.
On the other hand, Western orthodox Anglicans would see a plus because it would enable them to recognize only these provinces, individual dioceses and parishes that are faithful to the received doctrine and teaching of the church and reject those "pluriform" dioceses that have rolled over to the secularizing forces of post-modernity.
Interestingly enough some 21 provinces have already declared themselves to be in impaired or broken communion with Frank Griswold and the American Episcopal Church over the Robinson consecration, and this would be codified, legitimizing what has de facto occurred.
Another plus is that the formation of the Network NACDP), in hindsight a brilliant move by Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, would be recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the authentic voice of Anglicanism in North America, in effect isolating the bulk of ECUSA's bishops who are liberal and revisionist.
The Anglican world could then watch as they slowly withered and died with an inclusive "gospel" built on the foundation of diversity and pansexuality.
Another plus for the orthodox in the United States and Canada would be the break up of geographical lines and the ease with which bishops and archbishops will be free to cross diocesan lines to minister to those persecuted parishes in revisionist dioceses like the Diocese of Pennsylvania.
Some problems will still persist.
If there are no uniform canons and constitutions that can be agreed upon by the whole communion, and clearly this is not in the Episcopal Church's best interests because it is run by revisionists who view the glue of the church in terms of monies and properties, then it will require a brave orthodox parish who is prepared to sue his diocese over the validity of the Dennis Canon.
The issue of who owns the properties will need to be confronted, and the validity of the Dennis Canon will need to be challenged.
One parish, The Church of the Good Shepherd in St. Louis is doing just that in the Diocese of Missouri, and it will be interesting to see how that all plays out both in St. Louis, their State Supreme Court and ultimately the Supreme Court - the Rev. Paul Walter is ready to go to the mat with Bishop Wayne Smith.
There is also another problem and it is this.
Will the African bishops remain in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury if he still remains in communion with the likes of Frank Griswold? The jury is still out on that, but I wouldn't bet ECUSA's Trust Funds that a merger of pan-African bishops, Southern Cone bishops, South-East Asian bishops, doesn't just up and pull the plug on the Anglican Communion and reject Dr. Williams leadership altogether.
Impossible you say? Perhaps, but a realignment is underway that not even Dr. Williams can stop, and the growing momentum by the orthodox in the ECUSA has made it clear that business as usual with ECUSA's revisionists is well and truly over. Both Canon David Anderson of the American Anglican Council and Canon David Roseberry, facilitator of the Plano gatherings, are way beyond arguing with Griswold, their only question is what a future Episcopal Church will look like.
Whatever finally emerges from the leak, and the possibility of a new confederation, one thing is for sure, the Anglican Communion is moving closer to the edge of the abyss and unless the revisionists repent of their moral apostasies and theological heresies, then one way or another it is all over for the Anglican Communion.
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END
The blissfull opportunity to go to my parish church on Sunday, to worship withotu having anyone trying to cram a radical agenda down my throat along with the communion wafer..
Today was one of those days that we've all experienced, a substitute pastor, as ours is away for the week. Anywho, the NY Diocese of ECUSA is really scraping the bottom of the barrel...old,, whispering, almost unintelligible voice, who obviously decided to take advantage of his 15 minutes of fame..more lke 30.. Sermon was just awful..no context, no theme, just endless ramblings about dys back when he spent his time protesting and picketing with some nuns, for various social justice causes in New Jersey, and why can't we do that now..then to a long harangue about hunger i America, the world, and the need to support the Midnight RUns..OK .you get the drift..everyone is squirming in their seats...all wishing why didn't we choose TODAY to sleep late (G)..OK>we suck it up, it's gonna end, sometime, right? Our minister normally runs about 10 minutes, this guy is at 20 and counting, and we're already about 20 minutes more behind scgedule, because he's just slow....THis factoid is important because it is our practice that Sunday school classes end at a cwertain time, so that the kids can go down to the church for communion. But, wer'e 20 minutes behind schedule, when allt he kids come into the church, and just as when we thought the old guy was winding down, he invites all the kiddies to come down and sit around him at the altar..OK, nice gesture, give himcredit..But then he starts up again. The younger kids had been making drawings of crucifixes and other religious symbols...He ses this, pulls out his own, and starts in again..talking about what it means to be a Christian..then, now get this, trying to find a way to relate to the kids, talks about how un=Christainlike he'd been when he got mad at someone who cut him off in his car..asked the kids if their parents had every yelled at other drivers...lots of the kids said yes..then, for whatever reason, asked what they would do if another driver would try to hurt their mothers ( it's Mother's Day, after all..) I think he was reaching for the self-sacrifice image) but when he asked the kids what they would do in that situation, one precocious 7 year old loudly screams from the altar..."I'd f**kin' kill him!"...
I concur. That was about the size of the group that founded our APCK parish somewhere around '79. Now we're beginning to look at the problem that two services each Sunday before long might not be enough... (and there aren't that many of us who were once ECUSA, though most of our known FReepers are...)
Sorry to sound like such a downer, but it seems to me its Antioch or Rome for anyone who takes the creed seriously.
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